Winter adventures Part One: Belgian Red in America’s Little Switzerland

I have never been a win­ter per­son. For me, win­ter has largely been the time of year when you suck it up in order to get to brighter, sun­nier, warmer times.

Like sea­sonal karma. And my time liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia — that was cheat­ing. Cloud­less, tem­per­ate cheating.

So tak­ing a long week­end to travel to north­ern Wis­con­sin in Feb­ru­ary was def­i­nitely a leap.

But stand­ing in a foot or so of snow on a frozen lake gave me a new appre­ci­a­tion of winter.

Per­haps it was the fact that I was sur­rounded by winter-loving peo­ple, but at least for a week­end, I became a per­son who sees win­ter for its fluffy, fun-filled snow and not the dirty, slushy pes­simism that usu­ally follows.

So Niel and I drove north­ward last week to take in the 40th annual Birke­beiner, the largest cross coun­try ski marathon in North Amer­ica. It stretches 50 kilo­me­ters from Cable, Wis., to Hay­ward, Wis., where Niel’s fam­ily has a home on Lake Courte Oreilles.

What does “Birke­beiner” mean? Found this on the event’s website:

It started in 1206. Birke­beiner skiers, so called for their pro­tec­tive birch bark leg­gings, skied through the treach­er­ous moun­tains and rugged forests of Norway’s Osterdalen val­ley dur­ing the win­ter of 1206, smug­gling the son of King Sver­res­son and Inga of Var­tieg to safety. The flight taken dur­ing the Nor­we­gian Civil War took the Birke­bein­ers and prince from Lille­ham­mer to safety in the town of Trond­heim. Inga of Var­tieg never became queen as the prince’s father was killed before he could return for her in Var­tieg. Nor­we­gian his­tory cred­its the Birke­bein­ers’ brav­ery with pre­serv­ing the life of the boy who later became King Haakon Haakon­s­son IV and for­ever changed North­ern Europes’ his­tory by his reign.

Heavy.

(But more on that in Part Two.)

Before hob-nobbing with skiers, we stopped over in New Glarus, Wis., home of New Glarus Brew­ing, aka our favorite brewery.

They only dis­trib­ute in Wis­con­sin, which makes stock-piling a must. And we had never been there in win­ter so we were excited to see their win­ter beers.

And their cherry-filled Bel­gian Red — my favorite — had a new fruit beer friend, Serendip­ity, named for the fact that cher­ries became hard to acquire with the severe drought. So they used what they got with apples and cranberries.

We bought all the beers — nine cases worth, which inter­est­ingly all fit in my trunk. Most of the cases were spe­cial Kentucky-bound orders for friends.

We stayed the night at the Chalet Land­haus hotel and got a few looks when we carted in the cases of beer to keep them from freez­ing in the car.

No par­ties in the hotel room tonight, hotel peo­ple, just beer babysitting.

New Glarus is sup­pos­edly known as “America’s Lit­tle Switzer­land,” and this hotel really embraced that.

Like it REALLY embraced it.

This rock seemed impor­tant. The let­ter said it came from the Mat­ter­horn, a moun­tain in the Alps.

And then there were these glo­ri­ous, glo­ri­ous cows. I kind of fell in love with them.

The restau­rant at the hotel had sev­eral German/Swiss dishes.

Niel was more adven­tur­ous than I, opt­ing for wein­er­schnitzel, which included an egg with anchovies on top.

We also got spaet­zle (potato dumplings) and roesti (hash­browns with Swiss cheese on the bot­tom), which I really liked.

Prost to iden­ti­fy­ing with some­thing in my Get­man heritage!

The next morn­ing we woke up to a blan­ket of snow, but thank­fully not the seven inches the hotel clerk said they were expecting.

But then again one inch in Ken­tucky is equal to three up north.

For only spend­ing a few days away from home, our week­end was packed, and more awaited us in Hay­ward, i.e. weird taxi­dermy, walk­ing on water and Span­dex … lots of Span­dex. Not on us … though I’m not sure that makes that sound better.

Part two of my win­ter­time adven­tures will come soon.

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